Marksmen 'embarrassed' by 7-2 rout

Saturday

Nov 24, 2018 at 9:48 PM

Mason Pulde has been unable to erase from his mind a bad — very bad — mistake he made two weeks ago when he was a goaltender for the Peoria Rivermen.

On that night, Nov. 10, Pulde put the puck back into play rather than dumping it into an open area of the ice and letting time expire. Fayetteville's Darren McCormick took a swing at the puck, and it wound up in the back of the net with 1/10th of a second left in overtime for a 6-5 outcome. It was a mistake so egregious that Pulde said he was gagging afterward.

That screw-up was part of the reason he was cut by the Rivermen four days later.

On Saturday night, in goal for his new team, the Knoxville Ice Bears, Pulde enjoyed a measure of redemption. He stopped 42 of Fayetteville's 44 shots while his teammates terrorized Fayetteville goalies Alex Murray and Dillon Kelley for seven scores in a Southern Professional Hockey League blowout at the Crown Coliseum.

"Oh, my God, I've been thinking about that ever since that game," Pulde said. "I've really been working hard to correct some mistakes I made in that game. I'm grateful to have a second chance, and I'm really excited that we got the win."

Knoxville improved to 6-4-2 with its fourth consecutive victory, which includes a 5-4 overtime victory at home Friday night against the Marksmen.

Fayetteville, meanwhile, dropped to 5-6-2 and went 1-1-1 for the weekend. Saturday's performance left coach Jesse Kallechy perplexed and ready to make some hard decisions about some of the players on his roster.

"I'm going to have to go back in the dictionary and find a word. I don't know if a word exists to explain what happened tonight. 'Disappointing' would be an understatement," he said. "That was tough to watch and tough to be part of. I think the best word to use is probably 'embarrassing.' "

As lopsided as the outcome was, Fayetteville actually led, albeit briefly. Derek Brown scored at 2:04 after the opening puck drop, but within three more minutes, Knoxville was on top 2-1. When Lucas Bombardier scored 57 seconds into the second period — a goal that gave Knoxville three goals on just nine shots — Kallechy pulled starting goalie Alex Murray. Dillon Kelley didn't fare much better, allowing four goals on 10 shots.

David Mazurek had Fayetteville's other goal.

"We've got some guys in there that should be embarrassed," Kallechy said. "What we're building here, that's not it. That's not who I am, that's not who (assistant coach) Peter (Worrell) is, and that's not what our team's going to be. It's a wake-up call for some guys in there that we're not as good as we think we are.

"I can't describe it, I can't put my finger on it. We've gotten to the point where we need to evaluate this team top to bottom and see what moves we have to make. We talked at the start of the weekend that our goal was (three wins), that that was the only thing that was acceptable. We (threw) away a game last night, and tonight we didn't even give ourselves a chance."

Sports editor Thomas Pope can be reached at tpope@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3520.

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